Read Online At the Jim Bridger: Stories by Ron Carlson - Free Book Online

Christopher, also a joke, two careerists, doomed from the get-go. Now we did this: she called, we met, I took my medicine. The drinks had registered in me a little, but I was pretty sure I wanted it over now.
    Errol Flynn was back on deck, his face wet, hurrying to organize the men on the ship, and I reached across Eve and took the remote and changed the channels until Arvell Larsen, the weather guy, popped up. She turned her head with great care toward me and said, “I wasn’t going to make a scene. I was just happy to finally see a man with a knife in his mouth climbing the rigging. It’s been a while.” She lifted her glass and it seemed to light her face there; her clear, handsome face was compelling. She had a kind of hard perfection wonderful on television. People who just met her always looked twice in the first minute. “Can you stay? We could order some food. You like the quesadilla, right?”
    I looked at her. I like to look at people; I like the charged moments and Eve knew it, accused me of being addicted to them and thereby manipulative, coy, fake, an asshole. We had eye contact there, and anybody can say what they want to say, but eye contact is it, the beginning, middle, and end. It is better and worse, stronger than fondling in a hallway, stealing a kiss, better than any touch, and I held the look, feeling it work in me, glide, and then I reset myself and opened my mouth.
    “You better not,” she said. “Not that our gal Debbie has assumed an interest in cooking or learned to cook or even how to gather and prepare half a meal, but it will be dinnertime soon, and where is the new husband? Shall we picture her there in your bright new kitchen, standing at the ready as ifto open the fridge: What is that worried look on her face? I’m being such a bitch here. Is she concerned about her mate or…Fuck it, Matt. This is just the way I talk. I like Debbie. You can’t stay to eat. And me, what do I want to do, eat bar food with some man? Please, forget I said anything.”
    Our table already looked like the party was over—seven glasses, three bottles, two napkins, assorted silverware splayed around the ashtray, the plastic bib holding the drink specials on one side and the appetizers on the other. I began to line up the silverware. It had been an old game of ours to remove the card with the appetizer specials on it, fold it inside out and write notes, sayings, mine always being, “A thirsty man has nothing for tears.” Now I just lined it up with the rest of the gear; I was lining things up. The late sun had dropped to the roadway and shot three powerhouse beams through the room, making the whole place only brown and gold, a science fiction scene, too bright, dangerous, throwing the shadows of the pool players against the far wall like storm clouds for a beat, and then a moment later as I finished my pathetic organizing of our tabletop, it all broke, the square girders of light dissipating into the bogus brown bar light, and we both looked up at our television for a moment, a woman identical to Eve with a microphone in front of an apartment building in New York. We couldn’t hear what she was saying.
    I took a drink of the Red Stripe. “I like the bottles as much as the beer,” I said.
    Eve leveled her look at me. “That’s the way it is.”
    “The worst beer bottle?” I asked.
    “Michelob,” she said without hesitating. “Stupid. Designed for nothing. Looks like it should be full of children’s shampoo.”
    I smiled. “You’re sharp,” I said.
    “Don’t,” Eve said, pointing the television remote at mychest, “you patronize me. You can leave anytime you want, but do not sit there and try to kiss my ass.”
    There was a cheer from the corner and the tall guy in a blue pinstripe shirt stood and raised his arms in a victory salute. Eve went on, “But this isn’t a good idea, is it? Idle chatter. We were smart and good at it once, but it was because it led somewhere. We’d meet and fence